The comment from an English teacher at Lord Fairfax Community College was one I had heard before. It went something like this: “This wasn’t the last lynching in Northern Virginia. There was another one that came later.”

John Owens, a librarian at Lord Fairfax, reported the comment to me. John said that a teacher at the college was checking out my book from the library when she mentioned another lynching in Fauquier that had occurred years after Shedrick Thompson’s death.

John encouraged the teacher to attend the talk that I will give at Lord Fairfax this Saturday, Feb. 24, at 2 p.m., or to contact me with the details of the later lynching.

I assume that the teacher was referring to the death of Nelson Pendleton in 1935. At least that is the case that I have heard most often mentioned as a possible later lynching. (Thompson was killed in 1932). I don’t know a lot about the Pendleton case. While I was working on The Last Lynching in Northern Virginia, I found two press clippings about his death. The first was a one-paragraph news story from The Fauquier Democrat. The other was an editorial from The Richmond Planet. The clippings said that Pendleton died on May 15, 1935, in Markham. He was black, 25, and accused of attempting to assault a white woman. His body was found in an orchard “by a group of enraged citizens, armed with rifles,” the Planet said. The coroner ruled his death a suicide.

The Planet, a popular black newspaper, was critical of the suicide verdict, the same verdict offered in Thompson’s death. The paper said the verdict was “overworked in Warrenton,” and it added, “There is a strong possibility that Judge Lynch is still holding court in this state.”

So was Pendleton lynched? Was he Virginia’s last lynching?

Maybe. It would be hard to answer definitively without doing a lot more research.

In a sense, this is where I was years ago when thinking about the Thompson case. I remember reading Paul Beers’ 1994 piece in The Appalachian Journal. Beers was writing about the 1926 death of Raymond Bird in Wythe County and called it “the last documented lynching in Virginia.” Beers may have known that statement would be controversial so he added a lengthy footnote. He dismissed the 1927 Leonard Woods lynching as a Kentucky incident, though few others agree with him. He also concluded that Thompson’s death was a suicide. He quoted Virginius Dabney, the longtime editor of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, who wrote that lynching in Virginia ended with passage of the state’s antilynching law in 1928. “Nearly all other students of Virginia lynchings agree with Dabney’s conclusion,” Beers said.

Well, not exactly. I did not agree and took up the challenge. I spent months reading documents and talking to people. I made the case, I believe, that Thompson was lynched. I also believe he was Virginia’s last lynching.

Someday, someone may do the research and make the case that Pendleton was lynched, and that he, not Thompson, was Virginia’s last lynching.

Please, someone, take up the challenge.

Please join me this Saturday or at another of the appearances listed below:

Saturday, Feb. 24, 2018, 2 p.m., book talk at Lord Fairfax Community College, 6480 College St., Warrenton, Va.

Sunday, Feb 25, 2018, 2 p.m., book talk at the Thomas Balch Library, 208 W. Market St., Leesburg, Va.

Thursday, March 1, 2018, 10 a.m., joint appearance with filmmaker Tom Davenport for book talk and screening of his film, The Other Side of Eden. Lifetime Learning Institute, Hylton Performing Arts Center, 10960 George Mason Circle,  Manassas, Va.

Sunday, March 18, 2018, 2 p.m., book talk at the Mosby Heritage Area Association, The Hill School, 130 South Madison St., Middleburg, Va.